


Miracle after Miracle after Miracle

by blueberrynewt



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Happy Ending, Implied Relationships, M/M, Memories, Multi, Relationship Problems, Worried Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 07:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19290637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberrynewt/pseuds/blueberrynewt
Summary: Bones reminisces on all the times it almost fell apart, but didn't.





	Miracle after Miracle after Miracle

The first time he almost lost Jim, he barely knew the man.

Captain Pike had just accepted a well-deserved promotion, and old Doctor Boyce had retired at the same time. The new captain and CMO of the _Enterprise_ knew almost nothing about one another when they met, though Leonard had a slight upper hand in that area — even at the tender age of thirty-one, Jim Kirk’s reputation preceded him. Leonard himself was new to space, having clung to Earth with all the tenacity of a man who has seen firsthand, more times than he’d like to remember, what space can do to people. But the fleet was suffering a shortage of medical personnel, and they were desperate, and Leonard McCoy was the best there was, so he’d been assigned to the goddamn _flagship_ without so much as a by-your-leave.

Official introductions and tours of the ship had given way to awkward small talk, then a casual conversation over drinks at the well-stocked Starbase bar. Jim and Leonard had just been tentatively deciding that they probably liked each other when the _Enterprise_ was called away on an urgent mission.

Sometimes it all blurs together, the endless missions and the emptiness of space, the innumerable times he had to stand over the body of a friend and hope to God he had the skill to save them. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all the aliens, mysterious illnesses, and deep space anomalies that tried to kill them.

There are certain missions that stand out clear in his mind, even after all these years.

It was Klingons, of course. It was often Klingons, in those days. They’d attacked an outpost near the border of Federation space, leaving hundreds of people without life support, many of them wounded. They were still at it when the _Enterprise_ arrived, unbothered by occasional weak pulses from the station’s remaining phasers.

The Klingon vessels were little more than scout ships, and hadn’t held out for long once the _Enterprise_ joined the fray. As soon as they were gone — one blasted to pieces, the other beating a hasty retreat back to Klingon space — Kirk had ordered a boarding party to the outpost to see what could be done. He’d commanded the party himself, and brought the Chief Engineer, a couple of security officers just in case, and of course Leonard and his two most senior nurse technicians.

They all shimmied into environmental suits before beaming over. Leonard fidgeted on the transporter pad, trying too hard not to think about his molecules getting disassembled and put back together like some kind of forty-trillion-piece jigsaw puzzle. On the pad beside him, Kirk was cool as could be, hand resting lightly on the phaser at his hip, eyes on the transporter tech as he gave the order to energize.

They’d scanned the outpost before beaming over, of course, but in those days the scanners weren’t sophisticated enough to pick out the differences between humanoids. They hadn’t known if there were any Klingons on the outpost.

At first, all seemed quiet. People — _human_ people, mostly — were scattered about, many of them unconscious, the rest struggling to breathe as the station’s oxygen started to run out. Leonard and his nurses had gotten to work at once, running triage as best they could in their boxy orange enviro suits. There were a variety of injuries, mostly electrical burns but some that seemed to have been caused by weapons, along with the expected respiratory trauma and cardiac stuff. Some people they saved. Some they didn’t.

While they worked, Engineer Scott managed to patch together an auxiliary power generator, and feeble life support came back on, along with lighting. That helped. It wouldn’t last for long, and the station would still need to be evacuated, but they could hold out for a little while. There wasn’t room for all the victims on the _Enterprise_ , and the evac ships Starfleet had sent didn’t have the warp capability of a Constitution-class starship. They’d be here in a day or so at best.

They were almost through the second-priority patients when the Klingons attacked. They burst through a door, eyes blazing, swinging those weird curved swords of theirs and shouting incomprehensible curses. They seemed to have forgotten the disruptors at their belts.

That explained the wounds, anyway.

Everyone in the party had their phasers drawn in seconds flat. There were only three of the Klingons, and they were still suffering the aftereffects of extended oxygen deprivation, and it shouldn’t have been too much trouble to take them down.

Apparently, Klingons weren’t that simple. Especially Klingons with nothing to lose but their honor.

The fight was over fairly quickly, at least. One of the security officers got beheaded rather spectacularly, and the other one got a slice to the arm with a bloody sword, so that she wound up with sepsis and died in sickbay a few weeks later. Scott took down one of the Klingons with a well-aimed shot from across the room, and Chapel got another one, but the third ended up grappling with Kirk in such a confused tangle of limbs that no one could get a clear shot.

For a minute or two, Leonard hadn’t been able to tell exactly how the fight was faring, but eventually Kirk managed to get the upper hand and ran the Klingon through with her own sword. The Klingon, on her knees with a solid bit of steel through her gut, had looked up at the ceiling and grinned a sharp-toothed grin. Through the bubbles of blood that formed on her lips, she had said, “Today is a good day to die,” and had done just that.

It took Leonard a couple seconds to realize that his captain wasn’t in much better shape. His enemy defeated, Kirk had staggered backwards a few paces before crumpling to the ground, hand clutched over a wound in the side of his ribcage. Leonard was at his side in an instant, waving his nurses to carry on tending to the station personnel while he snapped open his communicator.

“Enterprise, McCoy. Two to beam directly to sickbay, and make it snappy.”

It hadn’t looked good. With a number of broken ribs, a pierced lung, severe internal hemmorhaging, and a bloody mess on the back of his head where the Klingon had slammed his skull repeatedly into the floor, it would take a blasted miracle for Kirk to survive with all his faculties intact. Not to mention the countless bruises, abrasions, shallow wounds, and broken fingers he’d managed to sustain.

Well, if a miracle was what it took, that was what he’d get.

Leonard worked sleeplessly for well over forty hours. One nurse or another brought him coffee at intervals, and eventually gave up on convincing him to rest. He ate only enough to keep himself from passing out, and shouted at anyone who got in his way. Several times, he thought he’d finally succeeded, only to check the scans and discover that in solving one problem, he’d inadvertently caused another. Kirk’s body was shattered, and sometimes Leonard felt that he might as well have been working with frog toes and spellbooks, for all the good he was doing.

When Kirk was finally, _finally_ stable, Leonard could have cried. Nurse Chapel squeezed his shoulder and told him once more, very quietly, to get some sleep. Leonard ran over the scans twice more, just to be sure, then collapsed onto the nearest available bio-bed.

He was awakened by a tapping noise from the next bed, and his eyes flew open at once. Someone had turned the lights off in this ward — Chapel, no doubt — and Leonard snapped, “Lights,” as he clambered to his feet and hurried to check the monitors.

All clear. He let out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold.

Kirk tapped again, and Leonard looked down. The captain’s eyes were open and watching him. When Leonard met his gaze, Kirk tapped the side of the bed once more and glanced pointedly at the tube sticking out of his mouth.

“Oh.” Leonard picked up his tricorder and ran it over Kirk’s respiratory system. He pursed his lips and bobbled his head reluctantly. “All right, I’ll take it out. You should be able to breathe normally now. But take it easy, you’ve still got a lot of healing to do.”

When the tube was gone, Kirk cleared his throat, then grimaced. “Morning, Doc,” he rasped. Each word seemed to hurt him. That was hardly surprising.

Leonard looked at the time. “Try ‘afternoon,’” he suggested. “Hang on, I’ll get you something for the pain.”

While he readied the hypo, Kirk continued to watch him. “How long?”

“Coupla days,” Leonard grunted. “You didn’t do me any favors. Next time, you might try dodging a blow or two.”

Kirk had frowned at him. “You...eaten? Slept? Y’look...positively skeletal.”

“You don’t look so dandy yourself, you know.”

“Better’n I would.” Kirk had coughed painfully and squeezed his eyes shut. “Thanks, Bones.”

Leonard had snorted as he pressed the hypo to Jim’s neck. “‘Bones’? Really?”

“Mhm,” Jim had murmured as the sedative took hold. “R’ly.”

Leonard had cried, then.

 

***

 

He hadn’t counted on Spock.

Leonard had pointedly avoided taking any more classes than necessary on alien physiology when he was in med school, and evaded the subject studiously throughout his career. If he didn’t know jack shit about doctoring aliens, he reasoned, that was one more excellent reason for the Admiralty not to send him into space. They’d leave him on Earth, where he belonged.

So, naturally, they’d assigned him to the only ship in the fleet with a Vulcan officer. Typical.

Leonard had never spent much time around aliens, except at occasionally-unavoidable medical conferences with talks on comparative anatomy of humans and Vulcans, or surgical techniques specific to Andorians, or potential applications of the unique enzymes found in Denobulan saliva. Being around people from other planets made him feel a little gluey, in an existential way. Like old molasses someone was trying to soften by mixing it with cold water.

Serving with Spock was challenging. Trying to save Spock’s life was downright panic-inducing.

Spock had beamed down to an M-class planet with a landing party. Routine scientific survey. The atmosphere had read as standard nitrogen-oxygen, plus the usual trace gases. Everything in perfectly acceptable ratios. They’d gone down and checked in from the surface per procedure, keeping the bridge informed of what they found. Leonard was standing on the bridge, leaning on the back of Jim’s chair. Times like this, sickbay could get frightfully dull.

He heard the exact moment when the tone of the reports changed. Lieutenant Pressley was reporting evidence of local tectonic activity, faults in rock formations and a series of unusual lava flows, when her tone shifted from cool and professional to sharply concerned. “Commander?” she had said, and Leonard straightened up, listening to the rising thread of anxiety in her voice. “Mister Spock!” She’d raised the communicator back to her mouth, and her voice grew louder again. “Pressley to Enterprise. Commander Spock is unconscious.”

Jim had jammed the comm button on his chair. “Transporter room. Beam Mister Spock to sickbay.” He glanced up at Leonard, opening his mouth, but the doctor was already making for the turbolift.

“Some kind of gas,” Pressley had reported a few minutes later. “There’s a hot springs here we didn’t see before, and it’s venting something I’ve never seen.”

“Anybody else affected?” Leonard asked loudly, taking a blood sample from Spock’s arm.

“No, we’re all fine.”

“Must be the Vulcan in him,” Leonard muttered. His machines couldn’t tell him anything useful about the vial of green blood. Louder, he said, “You should all report to sickbay as soon as you’re on board, all the same. Better safe than sorry.”

“Understood.”

“I want as much info on this gas as you can get. Send your tricorder readings directly to me.” He paused. “Better yet, bring me a sample of the gas so I can run some experiments myself.”

“Understood. You’ll have it shortly. Pressley out.”

It took him too long to figure out exactly what was happening. He felt next to useless, peering at the sample of Spock’s blood through a microscope as if he knew anything about Vulcan blood chemistry. Hell, he wasn’t even sure it was the blood that was the problem, but he hadn’t been able to find anything wrong with any of Spock’s other systems, and blood was often a good place to look in such cases.

Jim came in to check on Spock, badger Leonard about his work, and generally blow off steam. He was anxious, for once, unsure how to help.

Leonard knew the feeling all too well, and shouted his captain out of sickbay. To himself, he resolved that the first chance he got, he’d put in a request for medical personnel with firsthand knowledge of Vulcan medicine.

It was Chapel who put him on the right track eventually. She’d run another set of scans and commented that Spock was beginning to show signs of what looked like hypoxia, though it was hard to tell with a Vulcan. Leonard frowned and rubbed his neck, trying to figure out what could have caused that. Spock was in a well-oxygenated environment, and his respiratory system seemed intact, which meant…

Oh, shit. His hemoglobin.

Well, not hemoglobin. Whatever the Vulcan equivalent was. Something copper-based, probably, based on the color of the blood. In any case, this bizarre gas seemed to have latched onto the oxygen-carrying molecules in Spock’s blood, so that oxygen wasn’t being circulated at all. Not unlike carbon monoxide poisoning in humans.

“Oxygenate him,” Leonard said suddenly, getting to his feet and hurrying to Spock’s side. Christine did so, snapping the oxygen mask over Spock’s inert face. Leonard watched the readout intently, not knowing what was normal but hoping for some kind of increase in brain activity, at least.

No such luck. He cursed and took another blood sample, ordered the computer to run a detailed comparison of the two samples. No discernable difference. He cursed again.

Well, at least he knew what to look for, now. The gas sample Pressley had brought was in the analyzer, and the computer had given him a chemical structure and a list of properties to work with. Using that, he worked backwards to identify the oxygen-carrying molecules in Spock’s blood, which were all stifled by gas molecules. All right, that was a starting point.

Leonard ran through the gas properties, trying to figure out how to counter this microscopic foe. He mixed bits of the gas sample with various substances, to see if any of them would destabilize its structure. Two things succeeded, but when he tested them on the blood samples, it turned out that they also destabilized some molecular bonds that should really remain intact if Spock was going to live.

When he finally stumbled on the right answer, Leonard actually laughed aloud. Christine gave him a startled look from Spock’s bedside, and he stopped himself. “Sorry,” he grinned, gesturing at a vial of green blood. Under the miscroscope, it was now conspicuously free of the alien gas. “You’ll never guess.”

She didn’t try, so Leonard gave in and explained as he prepped a hypospray. “I was getting desperate, you know? How he’s even alive after this long without oxygen...anyway, I looked around and thought, _what the hell_ haven’t _I tried?_ And I happened to look at my cabinet of, ah, medicinal liquor. So, naturally, I —”

“Doctor McCoy,” Christine said, a little scandalized. Leonard waved her away.

“I put some bourbon in the blood, all right? And whaddya know?” He shook the vial gleefully. “This little piggy’s allergic to ethanol.”

When Spock was awake (and after the side effect of mild drunkenness had faded), Leonard took the opportunity to quiz him about his physiology.

“You basically had no oxygen to the brain for damn near an hour,” he remarked, taking a sip of the same bourbon that had led to his breakthrough. “How the hell are you still alive?”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Vulcans are adapted to a low-oxygen environment,” he explained. “If we begin to experience oxygen deprivation, all our functions slow to the minimum level necessary for survival, in order to prolong life for as long as possible.”

“So you’re telling me that that whole time I was in there tearing my hair out, you were — what — _hibernating?_ ”

Spock tilted his head slightly. “An inaccurate parallel, Doctor. Regardless, I would not have been able to maintain that state for very long.”

“Is that a thank you I hear?” Leonard cupped a hand around his ear as if listening for something in the distance.

“You have my gratitude,” Spock replied. He blinked. “I fail to see how tearing one’s hair out would in any way expedite a medical recovery.”

Leonard snorted. “You wouldn’t understand.”

 

***

 

The worst times were when he thought he might lose them both at once. Especially when they were being all _noble_ and _logical_ about it.

That time when Spock’s father was on board, for instance. Sarek had needed a blood transfusion, and Spock was the only one who could give it, and he’d been perfecly willing up until Jim had gone and gotten himself stabbed by the Andorian ambassador. Then it was all _duty to the ship_ and _cannot abandon my responsibilities in a time of crisis_ and Spock was apparently perfectly willing to let his father die right there in sickbay, so all Leonard could do was tend to Jim and pray the Andorian wouldn’t attack again.

When Jim woke up and found out what was going on, he hadn’t hesitated for an instant. He’d managed to get to his feet, somehow, which shouldn’t have been possible and _definitely_ wasn’t going to help the healing process, and made his way to the bridge to relieve Spock of command. Worst of all, he’d coerced Leonard into going along with the whole scheme.

Well. _Coerced_ might be too strong. Leonard didn’t want Jim prancing around like he didn’t have a gaping hole between his ribs, and he also wasn’t keen on performing a blood transfusion that might prove to be too much for Spock, but he wasn’t going to let Sarek die if he could help it. He cared about his friends more than almost anything, but he was a doctor first.

So he’d set up the transfusion and done his job, even when the whole ship rocked under the impact of God-knew-what, even though he still wasn’t confident operating on Vulcans. He’d done his job, and done it well, and when the crisis was over Jim had come back to finish the work of not dying. Insolent, daredevil bastard.

Leonard can still remember how his hands shook whenever he slipped up and allowed himself to think _what if._  What if the injury was too much for Jim? What if the physical and psychological stress of whatever was happening on the bridge pushed him past his limit, damaged as he was? What if Leonard went up there after it was all over and found Jim collapsed on the floor of the bridge, dead because Leonard hadn’t done his job right?

 _Nah, they’d call if he died. Someone would make an announcement_. The thought made his blood run cold.

On the other hand, what about Spock? What if Leonard screwed up the operation, misjudged Spock’s fitness, made the wrong decision at a crucial moment? What if everything he could do wouldn’t be enough, would never be enough?

What if Sarek died? What if Spock woke up to find that Leonard had failed? Would he ever forgive him? Was that something anyone could forgive?

Leonard had never forgiven himself for his own father’s death. He couldn’t imagine that Spock would.

What if, one way or another, he lost both of them? Leonard had visions of Jim lying dead, bleeding out; of Spock cold and lifeless, or else cold and distant in a way he had never been before. Dread rose like bile in his throat when he contemplated the possibility.

It was bound to happen, someday.

 

***

 

There were other times, of course. God, there were _so many_ other times. Nobody should have to see the battered, dying bodies of their best friends, their _family_ , so many goddamn times. It’s not healthy. All those away missions, space battles, scientific investigations gone awry — and through it all, Leonard, doing his utmost to keep everyone he loved alive and breathing to the end. He could make a morbid collage out of all the images in his head that feature Jim and Spock in horrible, gut-twisting danger. Hell, he could make one of those photo mosaic things where the whole image is made up of hundreds or thousands of tiny pictures. He’s got more than enough material for that.

The worst? Gotta be the time when Spock died. When it became just him and Jim, for far too long, grieving and hopeless and then desperately, frantically hopeful. Well, them plus the little glow of Spock’s katra around the edges of Leonard’s mind. For the two of them, trying to exist without Spock was like trying to walk with only one leg. They hadn’t been making much progress.

And then, a miracle. Spock alive, Spock slowly becoming himself again, all of them present and more or less whole. Miracle after miracle after miracle, that’s what it had been all along. All of them coming so close to losing each other — Jim nearly killed in the _kal-if-fee_ , Spock’s _brain_ actually getting stolen out of his head, Leonard himself beaten within an inch of his life just so an empath could prove her race was worth saving — and time after time, all surviving. All holding on to each other.

Then last year. Last year had nearly destroyed them, after everything. Leonard runs over the fight in his head, and it feels foolish and small. A year ago, it felt like a bomb the size of a planet.

It had started with something small, a choice of what bread to get with dinner. Well, it hadn’t started there, but that had been the turning point. Jim had made a choice, and Leonard had muttered something about captains always getting what they wanted, and Jim had asked what exactly _that_ was supposed to mean, and then it had all come out in the open. Years’ worth of little resentments thrown at each other like darts, each man aiming for the bullseye. Spock hadn’t said much at first, but later he’d made a comment about the emotional patterns of human relationships, and he meant well, bless him, but that just made both of them angry at him, too.

They’d tried to work through it, they really had, but tensions were just too high and even after so many years, neither human had mastered the emotional control that Spock had tried so hard to teach them. So they’d gone their separate ways — Spock back to Vulcan to meditate in the desert or something, Jim off accross the reaches of space to pretend he was still young, and Leonard back to Georgia, to sit in blooming orchards of peach trees and think about every wrong choice he’d ever made.

He hadn’t heard from either of them for over a month.

 

***

 

Leonard finishes his peach and tosses the pit into the dark bushes, then tips his head back to look at the stars. For once, he doesn’t feel like a drink. This is an evening he wants to see in all its perfect detail.

The wood of the deck is smooth and dry under his feet. The air is just cool enough that he’s glad he has on a long-sleeved shirt. A hint of a breeze ghosts in from the ocean, brushing lightly against his skin.

He glances over his shoulder to the warmly lit living room where Jim and Spock are sitting on the couch. Jim is holding Spock’s lute, and seems to be attempting to play. A few uncertain notes filter out through the glass door. Spock catches Leonard’s eye, and raises one eyebrow a fraction of an inch. Even without the gentle tug on his mind, Leonard would understand. _Are you coming inside?_

Not quite yet, Leonard thinks, and smiles back at Spock. The Vulcan returns his attention to Jim, who’s getting too ambitious in his musical pursuits, and Leonard faces the night again and closes his eyes. He takes a slow, deep breath, then lets it out.

It smells like summertime.


End file.
